I just have a couple of comments to make about the Artemis project that NASA has developed to return astronauts to the surface of the moon. First, humans haven’t been to the moon since the Apollo program was shut down prematurely in 1972 after Apollo 17 returned. There were three more Apollo flights scheduled (they would have been 18, 19, and 20) and would have completed the entire planned sequence. Now, after over 50 years since Apollo, we have a chance to return and evaluate the moon as a launching point for missions to other places in the solar system, for example, Mars. I’m looking forward to seeing the launch.
Today (3/1/2026) I just learned that NASA has dropped Artemis 3 to make the first moon landing in the program, and decided to let Artemis 4 make the first landing. That will probably force NASA to make the actual landing in 2028 or later. As I understand it, Artemis 3 will be a test of the Artemis system in Earth orbit, sort of like the way Apollo 9 tested the lunar lander in 1969 in the lead-up to Apollo 11’s landing on the moon. Personally, I applaud the caution of NASA in not rushing things. Considering how much trouble they’ve been having getting the launch rocket ready for flight these past two months, I feel that’s a good decision.
Second, I also applaud NASA in providing somewhat more privacy in the Artemis spacecraft, especially for the most private of human endeavors. Privacy was so lacking in Apollo, what with human excrement floating about the cabin. Apollo worked, yes, and it did its job and did it reasonably well, but it seems to me to have been designed with the absolute minimum in accommodations that NASA could have gotten away with. Longer flights, to Mars, for example, will have to have many orders of magnitude of privacy furnishings if they want the crew to arrive at its destination in reasonably good spirits.